


Not Halfway Between Sleep and Death

by andyourbirdcanscene



Category: Fringe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:26:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andyourbirdcanscene/pseuds/andyourbirdcanscene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fauxlivia" pays one last visit to Thomas Newton.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Halfway Between Sleep and Death

**Author's Note:**

> Contains spoilers for 3x04 "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?"
> 
> Fans of Fringe will note that this is a direct adaptation of a scene from the show. No twist, just some meta interpretation. Like my other work thus far, it was a writing sample, and I just thought I would post it here.

There was a certain satisfaction to the sound of her footsteps echoing in the cold and barren halls on the way to Newton's cell. A good ending to a terrible day. The loss of her agent was regrettable, or was about to be, but she was a capable agent. She had the drive to succeed all on her own. She didn't _need_ the shapeshifter's help.

She slid the door panel aside, perfect level for her to peer through to where he remained seated. Her gaze remained impassive as he looked up and asked her one simple question. “Is the Van Horn disc secure?”

“It is.” She didn't attempt to hide the satisfied tinge to her tone. She set a small, thin, square sheet on the ledge cut away in the door. He stood then, and examined it. He knew what it meant, and _wisely,_ he didn't protest. But he couldn't help but state his case. “You're going to have a very difficult time without me, you know?”

“Well,” she smiled then, “there are plenty of machines _here_.” In this other universe – this place the two of them had so perfectly infiltrated. Her gaze hardened. “I can befriend a vacuum cleaner.”

Amusement brought the corners of Newton's mouth up, making a series of three creases on his face that only served to make him look more cheery. In spite of everything about to happen. He was handsome. She'd remember him handsome. “You're very good at that.”

“At what?” she demanded.

“At continuing to try to convince yourself that you don't care.” A beat of silence passed between them, charged, but not necessarily tense. “But you do care, don't you?

“Every night, when your head hits the pillow, in the last moments before you go to sleep, your emotions betray you.” His eyes crinkled around the edges with mirth. He was enjoying challenging her competency, and he watched that carefully too-neutral expression as he did so. “And you question your ability to pull this off.

“Words like _integrity, self-respect_ \- they haunt you. They form a line you're unwilling to cross.” He didn't dare laugh, but Olivia suspected that he wanted to when he got to his punchline. “And that will lead to your undoing.”

Her nostrils didn't even flare. If her emotions betrayed her at all, it was _only_ in those moments just before sleep. In the sanctity and dark of her own (the Other Olivia's own) bedroom.

“But I suppose that's not my problem anymore,” Newton concluded.

Olivia waited only scant seconds before she slid the hatch closed again without any other outward indication of her thoughts. She turned away from the door and started back down the hall again, mind racing as she kept her pace deceptively leisurely, though purposefully measured.

It was the last time she would see him. In moments, he would be laying on the floor of his cell in a puddle of his own mercury-blood. Dead at her hands just as surely as his own. And in those final moments, they both would know that he was right about her.

But after those moments passed, and Newton was gone, Olivia would be the the last and the only one to know.


End file.
